Let's Hear it for the Senators!

The Ottawa Senators, that is. I don't know the first thing about the post-lockout NHL, or want to, but I know the Stanley Cup will be appreciated more in Eastern Ontario than it will in Anaheim (of Los Angeles).

As for the august body on Capitol Hill, I'm not going to join the chorus of denunciation. Charges of cowardice, betrayal, and trasformismo have been raining down upon the Democratic Senators who voted in favor of the emergency appropriation bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. As best as I can tell, this is because these villains actually wanted to approve the funds, which most of the denouncers didn't want to happen in any form. The big issue seemed to have been around putting conditions in the appropriation which would prevent Bush from signing it. Which would seem to be a strange approach to providing funds if one actually intended the funds to be spent.

I think the Democratic leadership saw that they had milked this contingent angle about as far as they could, and there was not going to be any other exit. This was--sort of like going into Iraq was--choosing to pick a battle on the enemy's choice of turf. The constitutional deck was stacked for the President on this one, short of the Democrats actually finding the will to deny Bush the funds altogether.

Even next year that will be unlikely; I won't say it would've been premature to cut off funds this year, but it was a stance that would have provoked an even bigger constitutional crisis, once again with the Executive holding the trumps.

In other words, I'm not going to condemn Joe Biden for voting for the funding resolution. I'm not going to praise, or to blame, Obama or Clinton much for their votes, either; it was symbolic either way--we knew Bush would get his surge. The Iraq Scourge Policy bites for the Democrats, as well. Tactically, this was a showdown they should have seen coming and done better to avoid. I will blame any Democrat who tries to use this vote to disparage any fellow Democrat (or anyone at all who tries to disparage Ron Paul, one of the two Republican votes against the resolution in the House).

It's fine for Obama to say that we were within "only 16 votes from ending the war"; that's about a country mile. The real harm of this may be that those who thought everything had changed after 2006 may be disillusioned for the battles yet to come. There will be another showdown, and a better one, if Bush doesn't make the surge a temporary one. Beyond that, though, in spite of a narrow majority in the Senate and a slightly wider one in the House, control of power still remains with the Republicans. And the war is still theirs--whether Bush plays ball with them in '08 (by commencing troop withdrawals) or not, it's theirs. And the GOP's '08 candidates must not be permitted to blame the Bushites for this mess--they've got the stink all over them.